My application uses a UITabBarController, multiple UINavigationControllers, and supports autorotation. In order to properly layout the subviews within each UIViewController's main view, I really need to know the size available to the UIViewContoller. I need this size to take the UINavigationBar, the UITabBar, and the status bar all into account, and thus only return the size available to the content view.
I thought for sure I could use the following from within the UIViewController's code:
CGRect viewControllerBounds = [[self view] bounds];
However, there are a couple of issues with this approach:
The first time the view is loaded, viewControllerBounds reports the view as being 320 pixels wide by 460 pixels tall. This is wrong. With a status bar and a navigation bar showing, the height should only be 416 pixels. However, if I rotate the simulator to landscape and then rotate back, the height of viewControllerBounds changes to 416.
If I rotate the first view in the navigation controller to landscape mode and then push another view controller onto the stack, viewControllerBounds for the new view reports a width of 300 pixels and a height of 480 pixels. So the view's bounds didn't even take the rotation into account.
Is there a better way to do this? I really don't want to have to start hardcoding the widths and heights of all the various UI elements the iPhone OS provides. I have tried setting the autoresizing mask of the UIViewController's view, but that doesn't seem to change anything. The views definitely seem to be displaying properly. When I set a background color that view looks like it takes up all of the space available to it.
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.